| Citation |
NYJ-N.772.022
27 Feb 1772:41 (1521)
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE COXCOMB.
A coxcomb once in Handel's parlour found
A Grecian lyre, and try'd to make it sound
O'er the fine stops his aukward fist he flings,
And rudely presses on th' elastic strings;
Awaken'd discord shrieks, and scolds, and raves,
Wild as the dissonance of winds and waves,
Loud as a Wapping mob at midnight bawls,
Harsh as ten chariots rolling round St. Paul's,
And hoarser far than all the ecstatic race,
Whose drunken orgies stunn'd the wilds of Thrace.
Friend quoth the sage, that fine machine contains
Exacter numbers and diviner strains;
Strains, such as once could build the Theban wall
And stop the mountain torrent in its fall:
But yet, to wake them, rouze them, and inspire,
Asks a fine finger, and a touch of fire;
A feeling soul whose all expressive pow'rs
Can copy Nature as she sinks or soars;
And, just, alike to passion, time, and place,
Refine correctness into ease and grace.
He said--and, flying o'er each quiv'ring wire,
Spread his light hand, and swept it on the lyre.
Quick to his touch the lyre began to glow,
The sound to kindle, and the air to flow,
Deep as the murmurs of the falling floods,
Sweet as the warbles of the vocal woods:
The list'ning passions hear, and sink, and rise,
As the nice harmony or swells, or dies:
The pulse of avarice forgets to move,
A purer rapture fills the breast of love;
Devotion lifts to heaven a holier eye,
And bleeding pity heaves a softer sigh.
Life has its ease, amusement, joy, and fire,
Hid in itself as music in the lyre;
And, like the lyre, will all its pow'rs impart,
When touch'd and manag'd by the hand of art;
But half mankind, like Handel's fool, destroy,
Through rage and ignorance, the strain of joy;
Irregularly will the passions roll
Through nature's finest instrument, the soul:
While men of sense, with Handel's happier skill,
Correct the taste, and harmonize the will,
Teach their affections like his notes to flow,
Not rais'd too high, nor ever sunk too low;
'Till ev'ry virtue, measure'd and refin'd,
As fits the concert of the master-mind,
Melts in its kindred sounds, and pours along
Th' according music of the moral song.
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